Public opinion reigns as People’s Choice Netguide Awards announced

Internet users from around New Zealand, over 278,000 of them in fact,
have been busy singling out their favourite websites as part of the
2011 People’s Choice NetGuide Web Awards.

The results have been tallied
and while there were a few repeat offenders, this year’s overall winner
isn’t even of local origin. Mega social networking site Facebook took
out the top honour for Site of the Year, taking the crown from last
year’s winner stuff.co.nz. The site also nabbed the Best Social
Networking Site award.

Winners have been busy trumpeting their success including stuff.co.nz, who won the Best News Site category.

“It’s
nice to know that the New Zealand public appreciates your work and
takes the time to give such positive feedback,” says Fairfax Media’s
general manager of digital media Nigel Tutt.

But
while TVNZ’s hopes were dashed in the news site category, it did manage
to put in a repeat performance of last year by taking out the Best
Entertainment Site category.

TVNZ is attributing part of the win
to the growing popularity of its Ondemand offering, saying weekly
streamviews of the service have increased by 28 percent.

Head of
digital channels and digital media at TVNZ, Eric Kearley, says the win
demonstrates the company’s “commitment to ensuring consumers have access
to the very best entertainment and news content”.

Like Stuff,
TVNZ only picked up one win, but it did manage to edge out some
impressive competition in its category by way of YouTube and
Tickemaster.

In the ‘not too surprising basket’ was Seek’s win for
Best Employment Site. At a time when there is high interest in
searching for jobs, general manager Janet Faulding says the public vote
for Seek is a “great endorsement” for the value the site is delivering.

Seek
recently launched a mobile site enabling job seekers to search for jobs
anytime, anywhere and an innovative mobile job application service
called Mobile Apply. The app features over 16,000 job listings and also
enables users to instantly apply for a role.

Seek’s win means
Trade Me missed out on the accolade, but the website did win the Best
Trading Site category, beating out voucher sites 1-day and GrabOne.

Other
notable wins this year include 2degrees mobile in the Best Mobile
category and google.co.nz in the Best Homepage category. And with the
Rugby World Cup only days away, allblacks.com will be pretty happy with
its win in the Best Sport & Recreation Site category.